SIA New Member Profile: cohesionIB, Inc.

New Security Industry Association (SIA) member cohesionIB, Inc., delivers intelligence to commercial real estate (CRE) properties to increase asset value, delivering a unified software platform for data, operations and experience. The company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and serves customers in Illinois, Minnesota, Texas, Washington, Georgia, Massachusetts and California.

SIA spoke with Nik Patel, chief technology officer and co-founder of Cohesion, about the company’s history and offerings, the security industry and working with SIA.

Tell us the story of your company.

Nik Patel: Four years ago, Cohesion’s journey began serendipitously at a breakfast meeting between CEO Thru Shivakumar and Raj Gupta, the executive chairman of Environmental Systems Design, Inc. (ESD). They started talking about a technology ESD was envisioning in a building, a system that bridged the gap between tenant-facing applications and legacy operational systems that would allow the building to be flexible and responsive to tenants’ needs and have quantifiable and holistic data to guide environmental optimization. Six months after that breakfast, a deal was struck to spin the technology out of a mechanical engineering company, and in August 2018, Cohesion was born.

Cohesion has built integrations with industry-leading physical security systems, card readers and elevators to offer seamless user experience in the built environment. Cohesion is leading the charge to offer an agnostic platform to bridge the fragmented nature of the CRE industry.

What solutions/services does your business offer in the security industry? And what makes your offerings/company unique?

NP: A differentiated arrival experience from curb to office that minimizes touch points, reduces plastic and elevates everyday tasks with best-in-class smart controls. We do this by integrating with access control systems, card reader systems, elevator systems, parking systems and any other access points to offer one-touch mobile credential setup, digital destination dispatch through elevator in-app call button and parking reservations. We also integrate with a wide variety of Internet of Things sensors, building automation systems and other software systems in buildings. We are the only company that offers system integrations across multiple systems verticals. We make smart simple.

What’s something we might not know about your company – or something new you’re doing in security?

NP: Cohesion has risen to meet the challenges facing CRE as a startup, but the work is more valuable now than ever. Macro factors such as continued hybrid work, increased focus on building health, the need to reduce carbon emissions and a declining CRE workforce are driving the desperate need for technology adoption in buildings. Cohesion can help buildings and enterprise tenants with their environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives.

What is your company’s vision, and what are your goals for the security industry?

NP: Our company was founded in 2018 with a vision to disrupt the commercial real estate industry by creating a platform to combine human experiences with building systems, the two major factors for building operations.   

What do you think are the biggest opportunities in the security industry right now?

NP: We believe the biggest opportunity in the security industry is to integrate all systems through a single platform to offer an elegant yet secure experience to various users and stakeholders. These systems generate contextual data that will be used to enable human and system efficiencies leading to smarter buildings.

It’s exciting to be part of an innovative company which provides the commercial real estate industry an only consolidated analytics and intelligent platform that provides real-time actionable insights into tenant engagement, building operations, space utilization, building performance and ESG metrics – helping the world become a better place.

The views and opinions expressed in guest posts and/or profiles are those of the authors or sources and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Security Industry Association.